Piet , I know lazy intimately. Here's an image I sort of gave up on when I reached the limits of my editing in Lightroom. First, the composition is poor; I need more of the trees but I had to work fast because the white puff was moving fast across the gray cloud behind, and I set the bottom horizon too low. Second, I want to darken the sky more but don't know how without darkening the puff also. So I just gave up. Here are the start and the finish. Matt

Piet , I know lazy intimately. Here's an image I sort of gave up on when I reached the limits of my editing in Lightroom. First, the composition is poor; I need more of the trees but I had to work fast because the white puff was moving fast across the gray cloud behind, and I set the bottom horizon too low. Second, I want to darken the sky more but don't know how without darkening the puff also. So I just gave up. Here are the start and the finish. Matt

Ha! I like your Edit Matt, Get more comfortable with the beast called Mask. You add the effect, you add the mask (either hiding everything or showing everything), and then you paint the mask to let through or to hide the parts of the effect you don't wish to have. Masks are the Number 1 reason to bother with Photoshop, they make everything else possible.

Edit - since Halloween is coming up, we will have to do a tut on Masks - We will call it "the Mask of the Beast".

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The founding principles of photoMENTORIS is to have a place where professional and enthusiast photographers could come and meet in order to teach, share and learn from each other. It is our goal to foster this principle in an atmosphere that encourages creativity and exploration and promotes the advancement of our art through peer mentoring and supportive critique, while having fun along the way.